77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

Bit of a stinker, this one. Old famous house turned apartment building has evil goin’ on. And… not very likeable sketch characters get eaten by the evil. And… Moving on.  

Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James

Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James

Picked up the sequel to Fifty Shades in a charming little bookshop on Main Street in Durango Colorado, and read most of it in a bar on a rainy afternoon. Fifty Shades Darker loses most of what makes the first book interesting. After deciding that Grey’s obsessively controlling behavior and fetish for hurting women isn’t so bad after all, our heroine decides she needs to get her some mo’ of that.

Dumb plotting and tepid sex scenes ensue. I didn’t read the third one. 

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

On a long and glorious road trip with The Professor, I decided it was time to see what all the fuss was about. I understand that these pieces started as actual Twilight fan fic. I suppose the Bella / Edward relationship is here, to a point. But there’s no vampirism or supernatural action of any kind. Instead, what we get is an interesting rendering of a wealthy, skilled manipulator of vulnerable young women.

At its best moments, Fifty Shades of Grey is a portrait of a predator that has enough truth to it that, as a reader, I must assume that E.L. James knows whereof she writes. (I'm regularly reminded of Gavin deBecker's warnings when reading about how Grey treats our heroine.) The “contract” was interesting; I’ve never read one before, though I’ve heard about couples who employ them. And I actually quite liked the ending.

At its worst, the book is everything else you’ve heard about it: poorly written, smutty, frustrating, and dirty without being particularly titillating. Needless to say, if words like “butt-plug,” “sadomasochism,” “cum,” or “erection” make you feel uncomfortable, this probably isn’t a book for you. 

Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
Take a tour of steamy Bangkok’s red light districts, prisons, and police stations with your guide Detective Soncheep, the last honest detective in the city. Mostly, he’ll take you to tourist destinations, like Khao San, Pattaya, and so on. But he’ll also muse a lot about prostitution, tell you all about the drug Yaa-baa (speed), and let you in on a murder in the jade-smuggling/sex-change/S&M industry.

This is a fun noir style novel written by a farang, but with a superficial understanding and discussion of thai culture. It’s seedy, seamy, never really dull, and has enough occasionally well written paragraphs to hover just so slightly above crap, but still firmly in the pulp-o-sphere.

The Cellar by Richard Laymon


More bad horror. Picked it up after watching the superb film, “Let the Right One In”, which I thought a beautiful work that does credit to the horror genre. So, with vampires and murder on the brain, I picked out a likely candidate from the local Chapters. Read it fast, maybe four hours total on a colddarkrainy Vancouver Sunday at the Fairmont.

What happens is, there’s a house where something eeevil lives. It’s so eeevil that lots of people have been killed there over the years, and the family of eeevil inbred hunchback types who live nearby run a haunted museum of sorts of out the place. Luckily, this collection of clichés doesn’t prevent assorted folks from foolishly venturing into “Beast House.” Turns out, mostly bad things happen there.

Meantime, a young mother and her teenage daughter go on the lam from her eeevil and rapacious ex-husband who has just been released from prison. But when their car breaks down, it isn’t near Disneyworld. Nope, unfortunately for them, it’s near—you guessed it! – Beast House!

Overall, this was lurid enough to not feel like it was pulling punches, mixing plenty of sex with its violence. There’s a beast orgy, some very unpleasant child-rape sequences, and lots of good old fashioned murder. Otherwise, not too remarkable.

I’d give this one a B- for the pulp horror genre. It’s not as good as House of Leaves or Salem’s Lot, but it’s a lot better than The Farm, or The Right Hand of Evil.

Darkfall by Dean Koonz

Darkfall was exactly the kind of pulp horror Koonz has led me to expect. A series of grisly, unexplicable murders in New York send a prototypical Mulder & Scully team out into a terrible snowstorm to track the killer. He's open minded; he wants to believe, you might say. She's a by-the-books woman of science, no room for emotion or superstition in her cold heart. At least not until the right man can thaw her...

In any case, turns out that the killer is a voodoo priest, summoning demons and 'goblins' from various hells as part of a vengeance plot. Along the way, the Mulder character's kids get targeted to be gobbled up by these devils. Some chases ensue. Good wins. Love triumphs. The voodoo priest's black magic catches up with him. Scully learns how to love. Yawn.

The Farm by Scott Nicholson

Lets see… Scarecrows returning to life and seeking human victims? Check. Isolated farmhouse, teenage daughter estranged from her mother? Check. Weird rednecks? Check. Ghosts, murdered wives, asshole religious scholars, corrupted soil, even goat orgies? Check, check, check and check.

The Farm was bad horror at it’s baddest. Bought in a Vancouver grocery store checkout line, it delivered the exact grade of horror novel retreads, plotting clichés, and stylistic pap one would expect.

Nothing wrong here. Nicholson clearly knows where his bread is buttered.

Camoflage by Joe Haldeman

Haldeman’s fast sci-fi novel is a quick, fun summer novel which you’d not be disappointed to take to a beach with you. It’s neither bad nor great, and though it does devolve into silliness by the end, there’s enough good science fiction, sex, violence, and historical popcorn to keep you occupied for it’s rather short duration.

What if two aliens came to earth? Both of them could look like anyone or anything they wanted. And they needed to kill one another. Because one is fundamentally nice and the other is fundamentally mean. So when a deep sea salvage team with government ties pulls up a spaceship from the Marianas trench, these aliens get interested and come check it out. Somewhere along the way, a scientist falls in love with an alien. (Thus upping the sheer geek factor on this novel by a full letter grade.) A showdown (yawn) ensues, and love wins the day. The end.

I’d read another Haldeman novel; some of his others get higher praise. It’s always fun to read pulp sci-fi, but this is no Hyperion, just a fun, lighthearted and derivative romp.

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

The oddest thing about Odd Thomas is that it was actually a little moving at the end. See, I expected this book to be really weak, since the premise, the writing, and the emotional maturity of the characters all seemed to hover around the age-appropriateness of, say, a novel featuring a scimitar wielding dark elf. But despite all this, the book had some cool imagery, a surprisingly appealing central character or two, and a decent twist at the end.

So, Mr. Dean Koonz, despite your novels being widely sold in grocery store checkout lines, I must admit that I rather enjoyed both of the novels of yours I’ve read. So, I suppose I’ll add to the massive tub of gold doubloons you use to bathe and by another one sometime.

Sorry Didion, McCarthy, Kundera, Carter, Pamuk, Atwood, and all you other serious writers out there working to improve the craft and placate the ghost of Alexander Pope. The novel may well be a trashy form for the lower classes, but it sure is a lot of fun as popcorn sometimes.

Velocity by Dean Koontz

So a serial killer decides to make you make some really nasty moral choices about who he should kill. For example, he says, “I’m gonna kill someone tomorrow. If you go to the police, then I’ll kill a beautiful young schoolteacher. If you don’t, I’ll kill an old woman who is active in the community.” Now, either way, you’re basically complicit in the killing – in a sense. So then, add a financee in a coma, a bunch of red herrings, and a killer that’s always one step ahead of you and you’ve got Velocity. It’s pure pulp pap, but Koonz does know how to write a page turner.

I have a few complaints, mostly that Koonz is a terrible stylist, that the novel is really contrived, that there’s way too little real horror, etc. But hey, for $5.99 at an airport bookstore, what can you expect? This is bad, trashy horror. Real students of the genre would be much better suited to explore elsewhere. But if you’re a student of mass market success and formulaic novelism, then this might be worth looking at.